*Note: I'm not currently accepting freelance gigs--building Purpose Portfolio has me pretty much at capacity :) Thanks for your interest, and feel free to drop me a line if I can help find the right designer for your project. `sj

My church's 100+ year history of racism is one of the hardest things about being Mormon for me. Over the years, I've heard that racism explained away, swept under the rug, or even justified with twisted doctrine. That's why Saturday's "Be One" broadcast was so refreshing.

I've often wondered how I would have reacted had I been alive during the Civil Rights Movement. Sometimes, I'm sure I would I have hopped on a bus to Alabama. Other times I wonder if I would have had the courage to argue over Thanksgiving Dinner.

If there’s anything more damaging than expecting self-worth to come from the self, it’s thinking it comes from others. If the first is seeing “through a glass, darkly;” then the second is like stacking prescription sunglasses one in front of the other, squinting as hard as we can and then beating ourselves up because we can’t see.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t cured any lepers or raised anyone from the dead lately, but I don’t think that’s what it would take for the Lord to see himself in my attempts to imitate him…however laughable they often are.

I love the quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes: "I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity. But for the simplicity on the other side of complexity I would give my right arm;" but it had not until recently occurred to me that such garden-variety simplicity could actually be worse than useless.